The purpose of this Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I planning contract is to plan the development of an expert system to he implemented on a personal computer to advise a clinician on nutritional management of the critically ill. The contractor's noted that the assessment and support of the nutritional needs of the critically ill has been the focus of considerable interest in critical care medicine in recent years because these needs are sometimes difficult to assess. This can be due to lack of awareness of recent critical care studies, insufficient patient monitoring, or difficulty in interpretation of existing patient data. The number of rules and procedures which must be followed for proper nutritional care can be large, and the proper course of action far from obvious. To deal with this problem, the contractor's propose to use methods already established in medicine for the development of expert systems in the creation of such a system as a diagnostic aid which will provide advice that is both accurate and easily available for the nutritional management of the critically ill.